The Antelope Hills expedition was a campaign from January to May 1858 by the Texas Rangers and members of other allied Native American tribes against Comanche and Kiowa villages in the Comancheria.

It began in western Texas and ended in a series of fights with the Comanche tribe on May 12, 1858, at a place called Antelope Hills by Little Robe Creek, a tributary of the Canadian River in what is now Oklahoma.

Ford, whose habit of signing casualty reports with the initials "RIP" for "Rest in Peace", was known as a ferocious and no-nonsense Indian fighter.

He succeeded in recruiting 120 or so Native Americans in this campaign, 111 of whom were Tonkawa under Chief Placido, hailed as the "faithful and implicitly trusted friend of the whites", the others being Anadarko and Shawnee.

Ford and Placido were determined to follow the Comanche and Kiowa up to their strongholds amid the hills of the Canadian River and into the Wichita Mountains, and if possible kill their warriors, decimate their food supply, strike at their homes and families, and generally destroy their ability to make war.

Mention in history is limited, and none is in Ford's official reports on the battle, that the Tonkawa ate their dead Comanche rivals on the night of May 12 in what is referred to as a "dreadful feast".

Although Ford was unable to continue this campaign, it changed the face of Indian fighting on the Plains and marked the beginning of the end for the Comanche and Kiowa.

[1] For the first time, Texan or American forces had penetrated to the heart of the Comancheria, attacked Comanche villages with impunity and successfully made it home.

The U.S. Army adopted many of Ford's tactics, including his attacking women and children as well as warriors, and destroying their food supply, the buffalo,[1] in their campaigns against the Plains tribes after the Civil War.